The Consequences of Lousy Research
by Kia Vail-Kagami
Summary: Kain is young, bored, and undead. Random people have to suffer for his entertainment.


Before Kain had been a vampire himself, he'd been a human living in a world were vampires were a very real threat. It amazed him, years later, when he travelled through Nosgoth and discovered that there were still areas where vampires were little more than a legend to scare the children.

Don't go out at night, or the vampires will get you. (Keep to your bedtime!)

Behave, or we'll send you out to the blood drinking undead. (Do as your parents say!)

Follow the rules, and you'll be safe.

Because vampires, Kain discovered while he roamed the streets of a small village full of unsuspecting retards, had to follow rules as well. They couldn't hurt anyone if they were not given the chance. Apparently.

Being bored and in a mood for games, Kain decided to try it out. Let's find out, he said to the man telling the story to his child, how much truth there is to your legends, and revealed himself as a vampire by killing the next person walking by and drinking their blood.

His words alone were highly suspicious and should have warned any remotely clever person that they were about to enter a game they couldn't win. These two, somewhat predictably, were too busy screaming in horror to notice.

It wasn't a very promising start for them. For if Kain had been fair – which he by habit and nature was not – he could have told them that there were rules for this little game of his too, and those involved them surviving – perhaps – if they did at least one thing that wasn't entirely stupid. If, for example, they recognized him as the predator he was and reacted accordingly. Because you didn't run from predators. They followed.

It was the very nature of predators, really. Kain would know.

Watching the blood drain from their faces without his active contribution, he prided himself with not being hypocritical at all in his demands. After all, he had been a weak human himself, once, and he had never, ever run from a predator. If met with one, he would face it, and kill it, and if they managed to get him anyway, he'd come back to kill them later. True, this scrawny man and the little child of unrecognizable gender didn't give the impression of being well equipped to fight him, but he was willing to give them a chance, should they be willing to take it.

Kain finished his meal, whipped the blood off his lips, looked and them and smiled.

Alas, they ran.

Somehow, Kain had seen that coming.

So he followed. Of course a lot of people were running from him by now, and all of them were in a satisfying panic he could cause only in these outward places without being poked with sticks nowadays, but Kain had his attention fixed firmly on these two. His prey.

Vampires, the man had told his child, only came out at night. He already lost some points there – not because is wasn't dark, since it was, but for the sheer stupidity of warning someone to stay inside after dark while standing outside on the street at night.

Not that Kain would have been bothered much by sunlight. He briefly considered, while he followed his prey without haste to the edge of the village, to draw the hunt out until morning, but that did seem like too much effort just to prove a point.

There was a river running through the village, cutting it in two parts. To Kain's delight, the home of his prey was on the other side of the river, and to his even greater delight, they really seemed to believe in the myth that the undead couldn't cross running water. He had let them run ahead so far that they felt secure enough, now they had crossed the water, to keep still, catch their breath and see what he would do.

It was true that vampires couldn't bear the touch of water, regardless of whether it was moving or not. Water burned. Water killed. But the security a river offered to the humans was somewhat treacherous if there was a bridge involved.

They started running again, when Kain was halfway across the river. They also started screaming again, and he would have given them bonus points for trying to lure other people out of their houses as a potential distraction for their hunter, had he actually believed they did it on purpose.

Eventually they reached what had to be their house. There was no rule that said only your own house offered shelter, so Kain had to blame it on instinct – though not of the survival kind – that they went straight there, instead of locking themselves in behind the first door they found.

They would have been saved, he thought with mild amusement, if they'd jumped into the river.

The door of their house slammed shut behind them. With his supernatural senses, Kain could hear the heartbeats even now, of them and one other, so fast, but changing ever so slightly now they believed the worst to be over. Walls meant safety. As did locked doors.

A vampire, the man had told his offspring, cannot enter your home unless you invite him in. (Don't open the door for strangers!)

The wood of the door was so brittle, Kain would risk accidentally breaking it if he did not restrain his strength. Chuckling to himself in a moment of dark humour, he raised his deadly pale hand and knocked.

May 27, 2009


End file.
